They're the authors of "Betrayal of the American Dream", a new book that is just... really kicks butt. Donald Barlett and James Steele are the nation's most honored investigative reporting team, and they're authors of the New York Times bestseller "America: What Went Wrong?" They've worked together for more than forty years, first at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1971--1997), then at Time magazine (1997--2006), and now Vanity Fair.

Welcome to the show!

James Steele: Great to be with you, Rob.

Donald Barlett: Good to be with you.

Rob Kall: So because there are two of you, maybe you can identify who's speaking first. Just say your first name. Okay? [James agreeing in background]

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Okay so I'd like to.. in your book you talk about how in your previous book America: What Went Wrong?, you were accused of being alarmists, and that you actually under-describe what was going to happen and how bad things were going to be. Now, you're describing that, with this devastation of the American Dream and the middle class, there could be a hundred million casualties.

So I think I'd like to start by just getting in depth some definitions of wealth and the middle class, so we can get some baselines.

Donald Barlett: Well, you know everybody has their own definition, but you got to just work within some numbers.

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.